I am trying to create an image of an ultra light weight Linux that is deploy-able across different hardware.

For example I am using a dual core desktop PC MB to install Linux onto an old IDE laptop hard disk.

I then want to place this hard drive into:

1. A 486 laptop with 8 MB RAM, 528 MB HD. I tried this with Tiny Core Plus. This distro installed and booted from the hard disk. However, I received error reading hard disk when I inserted the HD into the 486 Laptop.

2. Pentium 4 laptop designed to run Windows XP. The old 528 MB HD won't fit in this laptop. It's too thick. So I use its original 30 GB HD. Again the HD will boot Tiny core plus on the desktop. However it hangs when attempting to boot in the Pentium 4 laptop.

Now I have successfully created an image of Linux Mint 9 LXDE that will boot successfully on an Intel Mac or any PC running at 400+ MHz with 512 MB RAM.

I am sharing my effort via dropbox here:

http://drpcdr.ca/Drop_Box.txt

Now, I am trying to do something similar with DSL. I am NOT having much luck with DSL. First, I can't seem to install it to the HD. Would somebody explain how I can do this?

I have created a NOT DSL live CD which actually boots successfully but I can't figure out how to install it to the HD. Would somebody explain how I can do this?

In anwser to your questions. First you need to decide whether you want a frugal or Hard Disk installation. I suggest you look at information on the DSL Wiki in order to work out which option you want.

Installation is simple. If the drive isn't already partitioned, do so using cfdisk, fdisk etc.. Then boot the DSL live CD and select "Install to Hard Drive" or one of the Frugal Install bootloader options (Grub is most popular) from Apps>Tools in the DSL menu. Now just follow the prompts to install DSL to the HDD of your choice.

However this will not get you far with the 486 laptop because DSL needs a minimum of 16MB RAM to run, and even then you would be limited to the terminal. For this purpose, I would suggest you use a distro called BasicLinux, which I myself use on a 486 laptop with 8MB RAM.

Using BasicLinux with a Pentium 4 though would be rather silly though as such a computer is capable of significantly more. So I suggest that the two computers should really run different distros to take advantage of their hardware.